Hamilton Spectator, February 14,2006
The provincial police watchdog is investigating the death of a 40-year-old man from serious head injuries after his arrest for public intoxication. He was arrested by a Hamilton police officer at the liquor store on Dundurn Street at about 5:10 p.m. on Feb. 10 and taken to police headquarters on King William Street. He was lodged in a cell at about 6 p.m. According to a Special Investigations Unit press release, officers on a "routine check" of the cells could not wake the man at about 11:20 p.m.He was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital and then transferred to Hamilton General with serious head injuries. The man died Sunday. The results of a post-mortem examination conducted yesterday are not being released.
(Feb 15, 2006)The Hamilton Spectator
Ontario's Special Investigations Unit says it is still trying to piece together how and why a Hamilton man died after being taken into police custody late last week.
Darin Fournier, 40, of Hamilton, was arrested for public intoxication at the liquor store on Dundurn Street South on Thursday, Feb. 9.
Fournier spent about five and a half hours that evening in a police station holding cell. He was sent to hospital with serious head injuries after officers were unable to wake him during a routine check around 11:20 p.m. Fournier died Sunday evening in Hamilton General Hospital.
The SIU said he "succumbed to injuries," but would not reveal their nature.
"Considering that the cause of death is very pertinent to what we are investigating, we are not releasing the post- mortem examination results at this time," SIU spokesperson Rose Bliss said yesterday.
Bliss said investigators don't yet have clear answers if Fournier already had head injuries before being taken into custody.
Darin Fournier was laid to rest in his New Brunswick hometown on February 17. The Ontario Special Investigations Unit, which probes cases of civilians suffering serious injury, sexual assault or death in incidents involving police, is still looking into Fournier's death and have not offered any resolution to date.
April 9.2006
Update:Hamilton police have been cleared in the death of a homeless man who died from a head injury received in police custody.
An autopsy concluded Fournier died from blunt trauma to the head, suffered during a fall. While Fournier had fallen in the LCBO parking lot, the SIU determined he died from a head injury suffered in a later fall in a Central Station holding cell during a scuffle with police.
The SIU concluded the skirmish was initiated by Fournier and that police did not intentionally cause his fall. According to the SIU, two officers arrested Fournier Feb. 9 after receiving a complaint from LCBO staff about his behaviour outside the store around 5:15 p.m.
Unable to find an empty spot at a detox centre, the officers brought Fournier to the downtown station. After Fournier refused to get out of the cruiser, two officers pulled him out and dragged him by his arms into the station where he put up another struggle, lost his balance and fell, hitting the back of his head on the floor.
Video surveillance showed Fournier moving around in his cell at around 7:35 p.m. before going back to sleep. Police were unable to rouse Fournier at 11:30 p.m. and called paramedics. He died after spending three days in a coma in hospital.
SIU director James Cornish noted, "The outward signs of his injury were slow to manifest themselves.
"What signs there may have been were masked by his level of intoxication."
Cornish determined officers did not act irresponsibly.
"The force that the police used in that interaction was not unreasonable and certainly was not used with the intention of causing him to fall, let alone to cause him any injury."
I don't where Cornish gets off delivering this most unwise and uneducated deduction. I can remember playing recreational hockey as a kid and once being checked into the boards causing me to bump my head. Completely, minor. The point being, my mother watched me like a hawk for the next day, making sure I didn't sleep for any length of time! Any idiot knows that you don't let a person who has had two sugnificant blows to the head sleep, intoxicated or not.
This is yet another cry out to the city to better educate and train their officers and for the SIU to cross the "thin blue line" and admit their mistakes.
Alcoholic waist to society or not this man didn't deserve to die and his wife and children don't deserve the lies the Hamilton Police department have offered them.
Later,
Kenaz
No comments:
Post a Comment